We’re not trying to turn this into a sports blog or anything, but did you notice twitter erupt with outcries over referee Koman Coulibaly’s stunning call in the USA-Slovenia World Cup match last Friday too? We were happy to see that we weren’t the only ones who felt team USA got robbed, but it got us thinking (as it did some of those in our twitter feed) about the human-error factor in refereeing. A study in 2006 by British researchers showed that referees are often as inconsistent as people accuse them of being and that they do indeed tend to favor home teams. What can we do about it though?

The study mentioned above suggested better video monitoring or using multiple refs, but more than a few twitterers complained that they’d rather have the bumbling referees replaced altogether…by ROBOTS! And why not, right? New technology is seeping into almost all aspects of the game – from the players’ uniforms to the soccer balls they kick around – and soccer themed videogames are probably influencing players in the same way football videogames are, aren’t they?